V. Archive

Individual spectra will be stored in a secure archive in a structure
to be determined. Data will be stored by night, in directories named
yyyy.mmdd. Raw files will be stored in a parallel directory
structure. Each pointing will have its own subdirectory within the
night directory, named by whatever name that pointing was assigned.
This name is not currently numeric. Within a pointing, a final reduced
multispec file containing all 300 spectra, named ppppp.ms.fits
and 300 sky-subtracted files with radial velocity analysis, one per
aperture. These will be named aaa.object.ms.fits, where
aaa is the aperture with leading zeroes. Within each multispec
file, there is a background-subtracted object spectrum, the unsubtracted
spectrum, and the scaled background spectrum which was subtracted.

Each final spectrum can be uniquely identified by its path:

yyyymmdd.pppppp.aaa

where . can be replaced by / to recreate the
path to the data.

Program Identification

Data has to be associated with the scientist who is planning to work
with it, and traditionally, we have done that by assigning each program
on an instrument a sequential program number
For the FAST spectrograph,
as tabulated here,
we have been almost able to keep track of ongoing programs so
that the same program number has stayed with an observing program
across trimesters. This has not always been easy; programs often
evolved significantly without changing numbers, sometimes to the
point of being entirely different.

Minicam, Megacam, Hectospec, Hectochelle, and SWIRC add the challenge
that the program numbers on the observing schedule are being assigned
by three different groups of people. We have decided to keep the
numbers the Time Allocation Committees have assigned, which change
each trimester. The assigned numbers will be propogated with the
trimester and assigning institution attached:

trimester-TAC-number

where trimester is the 4-digit year and a letter (A, B, C), TAC is
SAO, UAO, or PA (Public Access), and the number is the identifier
(number for SAO, letter and number for UAO, and string for PA) assigned
by the TAC.

Here is an example:

2004A-SAO-02 Bringing Hectospec to Full Performance

This identifier would added to all associated data files under the
PROPID keyword, with the name of the associated principal
investigator in the PI keyword. The title, if available,
should be in PROPNAME. These keywords should be in all
fiber configuration and field catalog starbase files as well
as the FITS data files:

The advantage of this system is that the same number will identify
data for its entire lifetime, from the time the proposal is approved
by the Time Allocation Committee until the reduced data resides in a
VO-asccessible archive. The primary disadvantage of this system is that
an observing program which lasts several trimesters will have
several identifiers, unlike existing FAST spectra, but like all
other data from our telescopes.